Being submissive and desiring slavery, craving physical and emotional ownership would seem to place me at a disadvantage, relationship-wise

I have to be the one looking to fit into the right “place,” right? I mean, there is the topdominantowner, fully formed and domly and all, needing me to be what THEY need in order to get the fucking equation to balance.

Chameleon, cuttlefish, octopus, me. All my life shifting colour texture shape size and the very fabric of my spirit to be pleasing.

Submission seemed to be just the thing for me. Easy. Natural.

After all, I am an Adept in these skills. It is nothing for me to build emotional dams, aqueducts, sewers and channels so that my emotional slop didn’t muss the hair of my partners. You don’t like that about me? It is gone. Sorry to have bothered you.

Of course, it never works that way. A placid pool, minding its own business, can be thrashed to fury by the mere suggestion of change. I am sure I thought I was handling myself well, damming up my emotions and kneeling and serving and trying, trying so hard, to be perfect.

But I seeped through the cracks. My very transparency gave lie to my struggle.

And when that didn’t work out, I was told I wasn’t “slave material.”

That I lacked the “heart of a slave.”

Which is a pretty shitty thing to hear because, Ganesha knows, it took years to get to the place where I could even acknowledge who I felt I was. To have spiritual insurgents in my heart conquer my city and then find it lacking was more than devastating.

It was killing.

The problem with the Henry Higgenses of the BDSM community is this: We Eliza Doolittles step up to the plate. We lose our flavor, willingly slaughter our ego, suppress our id. We talk pretty one day, and we have the spit-shine and the downcast eye.

And then, we outshine you. We have outgrown you.

And you have no fucking idea how to use us.

Your assumption that you have the capacity to MAKE US WHO YOU WANT US TO BE is fucking hubris.

Hubristic and damaging.

And we let you do it.

I let you do it.

I don’t know how long it will be, if ever, that I find the worthy person who, when they look at me, really see me and understand who I am, and not only that, are convicted that I am who they must have in their lives.

I’ve spent many years making myself ready to prove myself to the right person.

But I recently realized that I have no control over what people want. I don’t even have control over how people see me. Sure, I can set up smoke, mirrors, costumes, masks, curtains and soundtracks to keep up my desperate duplicitous dance.

Love me love me love me but please do that from over there. DO NOT get too close, because then you’ll see me for what I really am and THAT Mollena can’t bear any but the softest touch. She isn’t tough. She isn’t strong. She isn’t confidant and she needs more love than I trust you to give her so back the fuck off and leave us alone.

Next show at 10:00.

My relationships have been based on compromises. Some massive. But sometimes, a series of seemingly small compromises. And frankly, that was OK. Because they met some or most of needs.

Maybe I wasn’t your ideal physical type. But you liked me anyway. Sure I may be too heavy to get your dick hard, but I was also a heavy masochist and that got you hard, and I was proud to be able to take that. And that was enough.

Maybe you really didn’t want to date someone as twisted and perverted as I was, and you judged me deeply. But my nature meant you could do anything to me you wanted, and I was essentially obedient, and that was endlessly fascinating to you. And that was enough.

Maybe you relished the unnerving instantaneous bond that we immediately felt, but distance and your “Real” relationship would never permit that to blossom. Yet it was pleasing to you to let that fire smoulder , with occasional stoking with stolen phone calls and the grandest larceny of all: giving me hope that one day, you would change your mind. If music be the food of love, you fed me so over a decade. And that was enough.

Maybe I was not suited to the type of service you were convinced you needed, but you were patient and would teach me to silence my needs and my wants and my spirit and my fire and be the silent invisible slave you sought to adorn your stable. And I was giving up myself for you. And that was enough.

And throughout all of that what I sit with now is a battered steamer trunk of memento mori, and maudlin yet meaningful memories.

I had had that trunk under control, I thought. And I had left mostly silent the whispering submissive, craving ownership, craving a place, wanting to be seen for who I am and accepted.

But of late that has been kind of fucked up. Ganesha, remover of obstacles, put me into a situation, in a time and a place where my defences folded like night flowers at sunrise.

I can’t sit on top of it any more. Those previously dormant emotions and feelings are chattering and clawing and dinging cracks through which they can escape.

They have quite a bit to say.

And I can only sit and listen. To my own desires. My own fears. And I have nowhere to escape. Alcohol’s oblivion isn’t available. Running away to dilute my pain with the pain of others isn’t appealing either.

Listening. Listening to myself. Scared because I rarely know what I am going to hear.

But it is not painful, listening to my desires, my needs.

Noisy. Gods yes, noisy, yes. Many many voices. Many fingers hands, many eyes blinking in the new light. Many voices finding themselves.

My desires and fears are hungry. Starved, really, and they want to be fed, please.

Whenever you get the chance, but please, don’t let us die.

I don’t want them to die. I want to be all of me. And I now know, and I accept, that I cannot do that alone.

As much as I’ve had pounded, beaten and etched into my psyche that I HAD TO BE independent, that I could never rely on anyone, that people are only human and WILL disappoint you, I have to be OK with that.

That emotion, that desire, that longing, is NECESSARY.

How else will you feel the quicksilvershaprmess of that desire being fulfilled if you don’t fucking let it breathe and speak its name?

Pain is to be felt. That is what it is there for. Avoid pain at your own peril.

Part of who I am…a substantial part of who I am…doesn’t thrive unless it is in concert with another.

I cannot be the performer I am unless I have collaborators, an audience, a director.

I cannot be the writer I am unless I have readers, people who can hear me, and support me.

I cannot be the bottom, submissive, slave, girl I need to be until I risk, again and again and fucking again, if necessary, putting myself in front of the oncoming train of my emotional process so that I can feel the impact and absorb that energy.

The most precious expensive, rare and dear things on earth aren’t for everyone. They are often volatile, often hard to find and even more difficult to keep.

I am not suitable for most people.

But rather than assuming that this lowers my value and that this is my fault and I need to stoop to be conquered, I think I am going to try this new thing.